La mer n'est que le véhicule d'une surnaturelle et prodigieuse existence; elle n'est que mouvement et amour. c'est l'infini vivant, comme l'a dit un de vos poètes.

(The sea is only a space for supernatural and extraordinary existence; it is only movement and love. It is living infinity, as one of your poets said.)

- Jules Verne

„Vingt mille lieues sous les mers“

When I met Mr Tuniak in front of the Raben Consulting building today, it was the first time I saw him with a cane. He was leaning on it a bit, but it was clear for everyone to see that he was not really needing it.

We got into the limousine and drove to the time machine.

“Are you wearing the right shoes?”, he asked me.

I answered in the affirmative. Yesterday he had sent me an SMS, telling me that water proof shoes would be of advantage today.

“We will be staying in the present, your present”, Mr Tuniak explained as we entered the time machine. “The Gemini Foundation rented the RP Flip to search for a location for their planned research station.”

“A station like an oil drilling platform?”, I asked.

“No... although Gemini is owning something like that as well. No, today we are going to visit their underwater station.”

But when we exited the time machine we were still above water. We had landed on a platform that was swimming on the surface of the ocean and was big enough to put ten time machines on it. But you could still feel the waves heaving it up and down and on the edges water was spilling over from time to time. It also became clear now, why Mr Tuniak had taken his cane. Here on the platform he actually needed it, otherwise he very likely would have fallen down. I hope he doesn't take it the wrong way, but today – for the first time – he actually looked old to me. Standing next to the time machine, above him the grey and clouded sky, surrounded by a similarly grey sea he looked like a man who had seen a century pass by.

“Where are we?”, I asked.

“The North Atlantic”, he answered. He pointed at the horizon. “The north pole lies that way.” He glanced at his watch. “Don't worry, we will be picked up. I called ahead. Ah, here it is!”

The water right next to the platform seemed to boil. Bubbles of air were rising in quick succession to the surface, followed closely by a small submarine. A porthole opened on its top and Carla looked out. I recognized her immediately, having last seen her when I had visited the Island Leviathan several weeks ago.

“Ahoi!”, she called. She moored the submarine with two ropes to the platform. Then we helped Mr Tuniak on board. The submarine seemed quite modern, but it was very small. Officially four people were supposed to be able to crew it, but the three of us already had difficulties finding enough space for our arms and legs. “Dad has taken the big boat”, Carla said, once we had settled in. “Shall we take the short route or the scenic one?”

“The scenic one, of course.” Mr Tuniak pointed at me. “We want to impress our guest.”

We dived.

The submarine had four bull-eyes, through which I could look out into the ocean. But the light diminished rapidly and soon we were moving in complete and utter darkness. Carla navigated the boat as if she had done nothing else in her entire life. I don't think she even looked once at her instruments during the whole dive.

“Five hundred metres”, Mr Tuniak said. “Halfway.”

I had no idea how quickly we were moving. With no point of reference and with constant speed it was difficult to tell how fast we were.

Carla switched off all the lights inside the submarine. They had already been dimmed, but now the darkness outside also found its way inside.

“Look out on the left”, Carla said. “We are lucky. Long John Silver is around.”

Looking through a bull's-eye, I was surprised to discover a faint glimmer of light outside. It was very weak, but the closer we got, the stronger it became. It was a jellyfish with what seemed to be tentacles of infinite length. At first I had no idea how big the animal was, since there was nothing else out there to compare it to. Thankfully, the jellyfish took care of that problem for me. It was swimming close to the bottom of the sea and suddenly its light illuminated parts of a sunken ship. I drew back in shock. The jellyfish must have been over thirty metres long.

“That's Long John Silver?”, I asked.

“Yes”, Carla answered. “He sometimes comes for a visit.”

The jellyfish continued on its journey, completely ignoring our little submarine.

“We are nearly there”, Carla promised.

According to the instruments of the submarine we were about a thousand metres under the surface as we reached the underwater station. Carla put the submarine on a platform under it. The platform moved upwards and into the station. Then we had to wait, because the water had to be pumped out of the airlock.

As we left the submarine, a woman was waiting for us. Mr Tuniak introduced her as Cate. She must have been around 60 and like her daughter her skin was extremely pale.

“My daughter has told me about you and Xander's little project”, she said to me. Then she turned to Mr Tuniak. “Although I still don't know why you decided to do it. When you were a child, you couldn't even sit still long enough to tell anyone what you did in the afternoon.”

“I'm getting old”, Mr Tuniak said.

The inside of the station looked as if Jules Verne had had a hand in designing it. Only the airlock for the submarines looked the way I had expected it, with metal walls, steal beams on the ceiling and touch-screens. But everything changed as we entered the main part of the station. A dark red carpet was lying on the floor (we had to leave our shoes in the airlock) and the corridors were round and made using wood panelling. There was electric light, but the lamps were made of a golden metal and shaped into various forms, no two alike; with very few modifications they could have been used for gas lights as well.

We entered the common room. It looked like a captain's cabin from the early 1800s, but much bigger. Through the ceiling I could see the ocean. Colourful fish were swimming around the station. I paused for a moment. The ocean outside had been so dark, it would have been impossible to even see the tip of your own nose.

“It's a projection”, Mr Tuniak explained.

“Today the theme is the ocean, other times it is just a clear sky, sometimes a forest... whatever we want it to be”, Carla said.

In one corner were several bookshelves, with two sofas in front of them and several chairs that were just this side of not being thrones.

There were also two computers, although at first, I didn't recognize them for what they were. The screens were framed in wood, the keyboard looked as if it belonged to a typewriter and instead of a mouse, there was a marble ball embedded in the table surface (it was not real marble, of course, but that's what it looked like).

“It's called steam-punk design”, Mr Tuniak explained.

On one wall a huge medallion was hanging. It was made using two marble plates (this time it was real marble), a light one and a dark one and at first glance I thought it was the yin-yang-symbol. But then I saw that each side was actually a face, the light one that of a woman, the dark one that of a man.

“What is that?”, I asked.

“The symbol of the Gemini Foundation”, Mr Tuniak answered.

“Are you a member?”

“No”, he said. “You can't join alone, it always has to be two people.”

“They offered you membership, you just would have had to nominate a partner”, Cate said. Turning to me, she continued: “His mothers, for instance, are members. Kim and I as well.” Kim was her husband and Carla's father.

“And what are you doing?”, I asked. “What is the Gemini Foundation's purpose?”

“It probably would be easier to tell you what it doesn't do”, Cate said. “They finance countless scientific projects all around the world. That's probably the simplest description I can give you.”

“The aim of Gemini is scientific research”, Mr Tuniak added. “It's mainly about theories and not really about practical applications. First and foremost is the accumulation of knowledge. The practical uses for that knowledge usually present themselves afterwards.”

“And what kind of research are you doing here?”, I asked. “Marine biology?”

“That too”, Carla said. “That's my project, mine and Henrik's. Mum and dad are more interested in outer space.”

“Down here?”

“Oh, no”, Cate said. “For that you have to go even further down.”

A lift took us down to the lowest part of the station. Here, its appearance changed again, this time into that of a factory. Countless pipes were running through the open spaces, accompanied it seemed by thick bundles of cables. We went to a control station, which I can best describe as several computers put together on a balcony. Below that – and therefore below us – was something that looked like a huge safe door built into the floor.

“What is that?”, I asked, feeling that I was repeating myself.

“A water tank”, Cate said. “Our neutrino detector.”

Neutrinos, they explained, were very small particles, even smaller than atoms. They had the ability to travel through practically everything. Stars, planets and moons were no obstacles for them and thus they could travel unimaginable distances through the universe. Every second billions of these particles are passing through our bodies without us noticing. To detect even a single one of them is extremely difficult, but if you are very patient and have something like a huge tank of water at your disposal, it is possible.

“When we got enough money again, we want to install these detectors on the outside of the station as well and then use the ocean as our detector”, Cate explained.

“And why are you interested in these neutrinos?”, I asked.

“Well, that depends on whom you are asking”, Cate said. “I'm interested mostly because they can tell us a lot about what is going on in stars like our sun or what is happening during a supernova.”

“And dad's interested, because he thinks this way he can make contact with aliens”, Carla added. “Look at this!” She pushed a few buttons on the computer and the screens showed a long row of numbers.

“What is that?”, I asked like a broken record.

“Nobody knows”, Cate said.

“But it is too regular to be a natural phenomenon”, Carla said. I had no idea what was regular about those numbers, but I took her word for it.

“I have to admit that if you want to communicate through interstellar space, neutrinos would probably be the best way to do it”, Cate said.

“But in the finest tradition of Gemini, you would never admit that in front of dad, would you?”, Carla asked with a smile.

“I didn't know about this”, Mr Tuniak said. He was looking very interested. “Did you show it Fedor? Maybe he can find something.”

“No, since we have no idea where he is at the moment”, Cate said. “I wanted to call you because of that anyway. But we have been receiving this signal only for the last seven months and at first were sure that there was a natural source behind it.” She didn't have to add that she hadn't changed her opinion on that subject.

“And even if dad is right... the signal must have been sent several thousand years ago, our response would come far too late”, Carla added.

“It probably would”, Mr Tuniak agreed. “But such signals may not only be for communication. They can also simply be a mean to tell everyone who listens: We were here.”

NEXT WEEK: 

The universe is one big coincidence. Cosmically improbable coincidences happen all the time. We just don't notice them all.